What Will You Choose?

What Will You Choose?

I’m a tiny girl with way too much body fat. The strength in my body is practically nonexistent. It doesn’t matter what your size is if you can’t sustain the weight.

I’m a tiny girl trapped in a fat body. I have wrestled with my weight for years. It has been up and down in a yo-yo pattern since I had kids. I lost all of the extra weight after baby one. I lost it again after baby two. I lost the extra weight after baby three until my mom died. Ever since then, my weight has been a yo-yo.

When my mom passed away, I had been on Weight Watchers, trying to have some accountability to encourage me to lose the last part of the extra weight from my third and final child. It worked fairly well. The thing about Weight Watchers is that it doesn’t make you give up the processed foods and sugary treats that you crave. You just cut back on them and have a little bit less.

But the truth is that over time, as you age and your hormones change, you can’t maintain a healthy weight with junk food. It’s impossible. It’s impossible to maintain a good body if you are not eating well, even if you work out. Eighty percent of your body makeup is taken care of by food.

I know how to eat healthfully. It’s not for a lack of knowledge that I have struggled with my weight. I even enjoy healthy food. The trouble is that preparing healthy food takes time and energy. You have to get fresh and raw food from the store, and it’s not ready to eat.

Who has time for all of that? Being a mother is exhausting. If you do make it to the store to get healthy foods, then you have to clean them and cut them. You have to think about how to store them to keep them fresh. By the time you get around to eating them, chances are they’re already black. It’s so frustrating. I’ve thrown away more fresh and raw food than you can imagine. I’ve thrown away brown bags of fresh and raw food that we just never ate or that spoiled quickly.

I know how to cook raw food—100% vegan raw. I’ve taken classes from Chef Mandy in my hometown. I learned how to make raw pizza out of carrot and almond flour. I know how to make a tomato paste that is to die for and spaghetti out of zucchini. I’m not talking about spaghetti squash, no. It’s not cooked. It’s all raw. Spiraled zucchini with a splash of marinara. It tastes amazing.

I love healthy food. I love it. But my habits tend to go in a different direction. I’m not hungry, so I don’t eat. Then suddenly I get really hungry, and I start to get very testy. As my blood sugar goes down and I get hungry, I get frustrated and a little bit more on the edge and annoyed. It’s like my flesh wants to throw a hissy fit whenever I start to feel hungry. To keep myself from losing it, I reach for the first available food, and usually it’s not cut vegetables.

That said, at those times in the past when I was in good shape, I did go for the vegetables. I put them in ziplock bags and carried them in my car. I have the knowledge. I know how to be healthy, and at times I’ve been successful.

There came a point when I was raising my girls that I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the kitchen every day. One week I calculated how many hours per day I spent in the kitchen, meeting all of their little snacky needs. I had to try to figure out what they wanted to eat; I had to prepare snacks constantly and cut mountains of vegetables. I found myself in the kitchen for up to six hours a day, cooking and cleaning and slaving.

We even juiced. I’ve done the juice fast—raw juices, apple juices, kale juices, beet juices, cucumber juices. I love healthy foods. But when I found out that I’d been spending so much time in the kitchen, I eventually gave up and went for what was easy, just so I could have a chance at some moments of life that didn’t involve food preparation.

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